


Nightair in Lowtown

by barbex



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, First Time, Merrill the scientist, Pandemic - Freeform, Science, locked inside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23949205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbex/pseuds/barbex
Summary: A pandemic sweeps through Kirkwall. The chantry attempts to blow the "bad air" away and Carver and Merrill get locked up together. And what happens if you're trapped on a bed with your crush?
Relationships: Carver Hawke/Merrill
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Nightair in Lowtown

**Author's Note:**

> It's 2020 and we have a pandemic (and I'm well fed up with it). This fic is my way of writing about a pandemic without making it all depressing. And also, I always wanted to show Merrill as the smartest scientist. So this fic features:  
> 1\. A pandemic  
> 2\. Merrill's discovery of germs  
> 3\. Carver and Merrill locked up together  
> 4\. Merrill and Carver in love
> 
> Enjoy!

* * *

* * *

It started with Anders looking even more haggard than usual. Actually, it started twenty days before, when the wind stopped blowing and fog settled over Darktown like a suffocating blanket. The smell was even worse than the usual chokedamp, a cough could be heard in some forgotten corner and from there it spread like a wildfire. At the point when Anders noticed the patients with cough and fever piling into his clinic, the fog had crawled up the stairs to the markets and the illness spread along with it. When the alienage was hit, Hightown started to take notice, feeling the loss of services as servants and staff fell ill.

The guards at the gates tell tales of rats running from the city in hordes. The kind of smell that usually stays in the low sections of Darktown, creeps up the streets into Hightown with the fog. Now, finally, the chantry takes notice of the problem. 

"Hawke!" Carver paces in the hallway of the mansion, sweating in his templar armor. "Hawke, come here."

"What?" Marian yells from the second floor, leaning over the railing. She rubs her eyes, obviously having woken from sleep, as her nightgown also tells. "Who is dying?"

"Everyone soon, if we don't do something," Carver retorts.

"You mean the coughing?" Hawke pads over to the window on naked feet and pulls back the curtains. "Oh shit, the fog is everywhere."

"Yeah, the whole city is covered with it." Something itches on his chest, just so that he can't reach it under the plate. "The chantry put together a team of experts to get rid of it." 

Hawke snorts loudly. "Experts in what? How Andraste fought the evil fog? Did Shartan find a cure for coughing in some secret text? No wait, couldn't let that be known, has to be the Lady herself, right?"

"They got mages and templar scholars together, and they want to make wind to blow the fog away."

Hawke turns to him and for a precious moment she seems to be speechless. "Magic wind?" she finally asks and then begins to laugh. She laughs so hard that she has to hold onto the bannister, else she'd fall down the stairs. "Magic winds! Oh by Andraste's stinky farts, they must truly be desperate. Was singing the chant not doing it? They should have asked Sebastian."

Carver can't help but be annoyed by Hawke's laughter. Of course his sister would never take anything seriously. "Fuck if I care, do you think it will help?"

Hawke stops laughing. Her face looks oddly concerned. "Why do you ask me? I thought you have all the mage experts there in the Gallows?"

"Stop." Carver rakes through his hair. "Just for once stop this. I know the Gallows are shitty, I know it's all wrong but for once — just tell me! You're the best mage I know and the only one I can trust and you know these things. Just tell me, will it work?"

Hawke tiptoes down the stairs on naked feet and sits down on the second to last step. "I'm the only mage you can trust? Are you sure?"

An odd feeling creeps up Carver's neck. "What do you mean?" 

"Aren't you forgetting someone?"

The realisation hits him like a hammer. "Merrill." 

"Yes, Merrill," Hawke says with a frown. "I thought you really like her."

Carver's cheeks burn. "Yes, I do but..."

"If you say 'she's a bloodmage', I'm gonna hit you with a fireball." Hawke stares him down. "If you can't trust her, then I don't want you to keep making moony eyes at her."

"I'm not making moony eyes."

"Well," Hawke yells out, anger hissing in her voice, "trust is kind of essential for anything that comes after moony eyes so you better get your head straight about this!"

Carver sighs. He knows she's right and he hates it so much when she's right. 

"And you should ask her if blowing the fog away will work. Merrill knows things."

"Why would she know about fog?" Carver wonders.

"Ugh." Hawke rolls her eyes at him. "Does the templar armor restrict blood flow to the head or something? Merrill is the First of her clan, meant to be the Keeper. The well being of her whole clan is her responsibility, she has been taught about all sorts of dangers and illnesses." She stands up and goes back up the stairs. "So if you can find it in that thick head of yours to trust her, she probably has loads of information for you."

"Yes." Carver shakes his head. "I'm — "

" — a stupid nug, yes. But a loveable one if you work on it." Hawke grins over her shoulder. "Go ahead, I'll meet you in the Alienage later."

Carver stomps through the streets of Kirkwall and down the stairs to Lowtown. The fog is so thick that he can barely see more than three steps ahead but the clang of his armor gives him comfort, knowing that he's probably safe from any stray attacks. He has almost gotten used to the smell in Hightown but in Lowtown, it gets even worse. Added to the musty scent of the fog comes now the nauseating fumes of chokedamp, rising up from mineshafts to Darktown, making it a chore to breathe. 

The fog is even thicker here and Carver misses the entrance to the alienage twice before the giant tree suddenly rises out of the fog in front of him. Counting his steps from the tree, he finds Merrill's door and knocks. Something crashes inside and a sound like a pop in a fire can be heard.

"Yes?" Merrill asks through the door.

"It's me, Carver."

"Carver!" Merrill opens the door and steps back to let him in. Her whole face lights up in a smile and Carver suddenly feels very warm in his chest. "Come in, I'm sorry for the mess but I have tea if you want but it's probably cold. I can warm it up?"

"Yes, tea would be nice," Carver says, just to say anything.

Merrill pours tea into a cup and shoots a lighting bolt from her fingertip to warm it up. Carver isn't even taken aback, at least the cup isn't on fire like when Marian warms the tea. 

While he drinks his tea, Merrill has turned back to the table and Carver looks over her shoulder. The table is filled with bottles and vials of different forms and sizes, all filled with fog in different shades of green. One bottle hovers in the air, a flame licking at the bottom that brings a dirty green liquid inside to boiling. Steam rises from the opening and Merrill guides the steam into another bottle with a flick of her fingers.

Carver puts his cup down and picks up a fog filled bottle, examining the wooden stopper. "What is all this?"

"Don't open that, it'll make you sick. This is all fog from Darktown." She gestures towards his face and a light flies from her hand towards his mouth. 

Something settles over his mouth and nose, it feels like soft cloth but his fingers go right through it. But the buzzing feeling is familiar, he recognizes it as a barrier. On closer look, he can see a barrier shimmer on Merrill's face too.

"There, now you're protected," Merrill says, satisfied. "Now open it and hold it under this one." She points to a big bottle, hanging upside down in a metal contraption. Something glimmers like a barrier inside the bottleneck.

Carver uncorks the stopper and aligns the bottle under the opening of the upside down bottle. The fog rises up lazily, spreading out over the neck of the bottle like overflowing pudding. Merrill gestures and the fog rises up in a straight line, into the bottleneck with the glittering barrier. It wobbles, little waves spreading inside the barrier like a handful of pebbles thrown into a lake. The fog moves up and fills the body of the bottle.

Merrill takes Carver's arm and pulls him closer. "Look here, in the barrier."

Carver swallows, decidedly ignoring how close he stands to Merrill now, and squints into the bottle. The barrier still ripples and he can see tiny flecks inside lighting up like miniature firebugs. "What is that?"

"Something in the fog, very tiny things," Merrill says with a proud smile. "The fog carries it, I think that's what makes people sick. It's not the fog itself. Wait, I'll show you."

She extracts the barrier with a flick of her hand and transfers it to a vial that she closes up with leather. Another barrier begins to glimmer in the upside down bottle and Merrill takes the bottle with the boiling green liquid to hold it underneath. "This is extract from chokedamp. It's not good fog either, fog shouldn't be green, but it doesn't have the tiny things inside, see?" 

The smoke rises up and some of the green color stays in the barrier but it doesn't ripple like before and nothing lights up inside. "There's other things in the fog that make it smell bad but it's still just water," Merrill says. She picks up the vial from before. Miniature firebugs still glitter in the trapped barrier. "Without the barrier, we couldn't see them but they're still there. I call them mips."

"And you think those mips make people sick?"

"Yes, I tested it on rats." She points to two cages with two angry looking rats each. "They also get sick from the mips fog but not from the chokedamp fog."

"The rats get sick too?" 

Merrill nods. "But when I take the mips fog away, the rats get healthy again." She looks into the rat cages, throwing bits of carrot inside. The rats hiss at her and ignore the carrots. Merrill sighs. "They're angry with me now."

Carver stares at the vial in his hand. "The chantry wants to conjure a storm with the mages to blow the fog away, will that work?"

Merrill lays her head to the side. "Yes, if they start in Darktown and clean out the whole city, people could recover. But everyone should open their doors and windows."

"If they only clear out Hightown..."

"The fog will just come up again and infect people."

Carver stares at Merrill. "You're brilliant." He takes her arm to pull her along as he turns to the door. "You have to tell them what you know."

Merrill is surprisingly unmoveable and her arm slips from Carver's grasp. "No. Who would believe me?" 

"But this is important!"

Merrill takes a step back. "I'm a dalish apostate and you want me to go where? The chantry? The gallows?" Her gaze falls on the templar symbol on Carver's armor and her voice goes very quiet. "What do you think will happen to me?"

Carver presses his hands against each other, covering up the flaming sword on his breastplate. His chest feels too small for the breath he needs. "They would lock you up," he admits. He wants to say that he will protect her but he knows that he can't. He could never convince Knight-Captain Cullen or Knight-Commander Meredith that they should let Merrill go. And they wouldn't believe her anyway, no matter how much sense her research makes. 

"But they have to know," he says weakly, knowing that it's a lost cause.

"Making wind will help," Merrill says, her voice unusually hard. "But they have to start in Darktown and then move up the stairs and tunnels. And people have to open their windows and doors, to let the wind in."

"I'll tell the Grand Enchanter but I'm not sure they'll believe me." 

"Maybe they'll listen to Hawke?"

It hurts to hear Merrill say this, to hear how little he means in the game of Kirkwall, compared to his older sister. Carver knows that Merrill doesn't mean to sound deprecative like that but that's what he hears. 

"Fine, yes, I tell Hawke. At least then people might listen."

He startles when Merrill steps in front of him and lays her palm on his cheek. "It's just that people know her, more than they know you. Hawke doesn't even like that."

"Whatever." He shakes her hand off, like a stupid kid and internally scolds himself for it in the exact same moment. Merrill's arm drops and a frown pulls at the markings on her face. Before Carver can grab her hand to stop her, she turns and walks to her kitchen area, picking scraps from a plate. She keeps her head low and feeds the scraps to the rats. She doesn't look at Carver anymore. 

Carver hovers at her worktable, lost in the poisoned distance between them. "I'm going then, to talk to Hawke."

Merrill still doesn't look up. "You should cover your mouth and nose, silk should work."

"Allright." Carver tries to catch her eyes but Merrill doesn't look up and he closes the door behind him with a sigh. Somehow he managed to fuck this up once again, stupid nug that he is.

Hawke says pretty much the same thing when he meets her outside of the alienage. Only the urgency of getting the information about the wind to the Grand Enchanter saves Carver from a longer speech that his sister could pour on him. Hawke rushes off, her staff, disguised as a glaive, in her hand. Carver doesn't know why she still bothers with the rather bad disguise, ever since she killed the Arishok, everyone knows that she's a mage. The only mage who for some reason can still enter the chantry or even travel to the Gallows without getting locked up by templars. 

Late in the afternoon, a procession of ten mages in chantry robes follow the Grand Enchanter, flanked by at least fifteen templars, and march down the streets of Kirkwall towards the elevator down to Darktown. The mages keep their heads down, it's not like they can see much with the fog thick all around them. But Carver knows how excited some of the younger mages were to see the city, having lived in the Gallows since they were little children.

Carver has orders to stay in Lowtown and to make sure that people open their windows when the mages come back up. But if he goes to the edge of one of the cliffs and climbs up to the top of the wall, he can see shapes through the fog, the mages lining up on the pier at the waterfront below him. Someone yells and the sound carries through the labyrinthian alleys of Darktown and climbs up the tunnels and mine shafts into Lowtown so that it sounds as if the yeller is somewhere behind him. 

The yeller continues to order the people to open their windows. People in Darktown are naturally suspicious of chantry people, but most of them don't have windows anyway, what exists as structures in Darktown is certainly not airtight. The yeller stops and all is quiet until the Grand Enchanter calls out a command and the mages take their staffs from their backs. Another command, and they stomp their staffs onto the ground in front of them and light begins to cackle around them. 

The fog starts to spin around, hiding the mages under it and it moves upwards like a cloud. Carver pulls a silken shawl over his face, covering his mouth and nose. Along with the cloud of fog comes dust that burns in the eyes and he hurries to hide behind a deserted market stall. 

The roar of the wind gets louder and the fog keeps climbing and pours into the streets of Lowtown. Carver can't even see his hand when he holds it up, the fog is thicker than ever. He steps back out into the streets, straining his ears to hear if the mages have made it back up. At last he hears the noise of templars stomping up the stairs and he takes that as his cue to start his yelling. 

"Open your windows! Chantry orders. Open your windows and let the wind blow through your houses!" He has to hold one hand on the wall to keep himself from tripping on the uneven cobblestones, the fog too thick to see. He feels for the edges of the buildings, stumbling blindly until he feels another wall under his gloves.

He finds another wall but he has no idea where he is. Far away, he hears other templars yelling, ordering the people to open their windows. But nobody is near him, wherever he is. The ground is uneven, he almost breaks his foot when he steps into a hole in the ground. As he stumbles forward, something breaks under his feet, the sound of clay pots shattering following him around. 

"Open your windows! Chantry orders. Open your windows and let the wind blow through your houses!"

The sound doesn't carry as far here, which tells him that he can't be between the taller buildings of Lowtown. This could be the alienage or at least close to it and he steps more carefully, knowing that people live out in the streets and in front of their houses here. No wonder he kicked against so many clay pots. He maps the buildings in his mind from what his fingers tell him. If this is the alienage, then Merrill's house should be close by.

His hand hits empty air before he finds another wall to hold on to again. "Open your windows! Chantry orders. Open — "

The wind picks up and the fog begins to spin, and Carver realizes that he had not prepared to take shelter somewhere. He feels along the wall, his eyes closed, as they wouldn't help him anyway and the fog and dust make for a biting mixture. 

He feels along the wall for a gap, a door or some nook for him to take shelter in. The wind gets stronger, ripping at his armor, almost knocking him over despite weighted down by all this armor. Blindly touching, the wall disappears under his hand and he stumbles forward, away from the dust into a house.

"Hoh, careful," a familiar voice says.

He rips the helmet from his head and blinks the dust out of his eyes.

"Carver, is that you?" Merrill asks. 

"Of course it's me."

Merrill giggles. "The dust has crawled under your helmet, you look like you fell into a bag of flour. Come here." She leads him to the back of her little house, to a barrel of water. "You can clean up here. You should probably take off the other stuff too."

"I'll get dust all over your floor," Carver says as he wipes a wet cloth over his face.

"That doesn't matter, the dust will get everywhere anyway." She looks at the open windows and sighs a little. "Do you have to go back out there?"

Outside, the wind has turned into a storm, leaves ripped from the Vhenadahl flying horizontally past the open window and into the room. 

"It's not like anybody can hear me out there now." 

The wind blows into the house, dirt, debris. leaves, indefinable things that are light enough to be caught in the turbulence, tumble into the house.

"Maker, this is terrible," Carver says. "I didn't think about that."

"Don't worry, this happens more often than you think," Merrill says. "People will clean up, like they always do."

"This? A storm like this almost blowing you home away happens often?"

Merrill shrugs and drapes a blanket over her worktable. "After every storm, people help each other clean things up. And in Hightown — "

" — they have servants to clean up." Carver can just imagine how much Marian will hate that. 

"Come, we can shelter in the back." Merrill goes into the second room of her house, and sits down on her bed. "I can hold a barrier around us but you have to take your armor off, it's more difficult to hold it with all that metal nearby."

"All right, yes, I can do that." Carver unbuckles the heavy plates and removes his gauntlets, vambraces and all the other bits and pieces of iron strapped to his body. When he is finally in his shirts and breeches, Merrill pats the bed next to her and waits for him to sit down.

"Hold your breath."

"What?" Carver blinks against the dust blowing over them.

"Hold your breath," Merrill repeats firmly. She waits for Carver to do so and then takes a deep breath herself. Her hand lights up in a golden glow and her fingers dance a little pattern in the air. With a hiss, a barrier builds up around them, clear on the inside, keeping the dust outside. Merrill holds up her finger until the hissing noise stops. She breathes in and nods. "You can breathe now."

Carver takes a deep breath and almost chokes on how clean the air smells. Not even out at sea had the air been this clean. "What did you do?"

"I filtered out all the particles and the mips. We can wait here until the magical storm is over." She glances up to him with a shy smile. "If you want that."

"Yes, yes I do, it's nice here and..." he stops babbling because he cannot think of a single thing to say. Merrill sits so close to him, that her elbow brushes against his and they're sitting on Merril's bed. Her bed! What is he supposed to do now? Her bed!

"Carver?" Merrill looks at him concerned. "Do you feel alright?"

He laughs out. "Yes, I'm fine, I'm just — " he looks over to her and decides to just say what he thinks for once. "I'm just nervous when I'm around you."

Merrill's eyes go wide. "Around me? But I would never hurt you, I'm not like that." 

"I know," Carver says and shifts on the bed so that he can fully look at her. "I didn't mean because you're a mage and all that. I meant because... because... you're you." 

A smile grows slowly on Merrill's face. "Do you like me?"

Carver swallows, even though his throat feels dry like parchment. The barrier glimmers like a giant soap bubble around them and Merrill's eyes shine in the deepest green. "Yes, I like you very much."

"Why don't you kiss me then?"

"I don't know, I never thought... can I?"

"Yes."

He leans over, staring at her soft lips. She closes the distance and her lips meet his, soft and sweet, just a brush. 

He leans back, so that he can see her smile and the rosy blush on her cheeks. 

"Can I kiss you now?" Merrill asks.

"Yes, I..." He can't finish whatever he wanted to say because Merrill jumps into his lap and takes his head into her hands and kisses him with a hunger that has his head spin. Her tongue dips between his lips and everything but Merrill falls away from his senses. 

She pushes against him, toppling him over and presses his shoulders down. She leans over him, smiling at him. "Is this all right?" she asks.

"Andraste have mercy, yes, this is very much all right." Carver lets his hands roam over Merrill's backside, following the curve of her lower back and her delightful bottom. 

Merrill laughs softly and traces the shell of his ear with a fingertip. Her body stretches out over his, and she pushes his jacket up with her other hand, sliding up until her fingertip brushes over his nipple. 

Carver gasps and dares to slide his hand under her dress. Her skin is soft but her body feels firm, there's strength in her small frame that one wouldn't expect just by looking at her. She unties the tie around her hips with a quick hand before she returns to kiss his earlobe. Her dress falls open like a robe, revealing her golden skin, and Carver is glad that he doesn't wear his armor anymore.

The thought makes him halt. "Tell me, does the metal in my armor really make it harder to keep a barrier up?"

Merrill sits up and looks at him with a shy smile. "Not really?"

Carver raises himself up on his elbows to look at her. "So you just said that to — "

A deep blush rises up in Merrill's face. "I just thought it would be nicer," she says, looking away. 

Carver stares at her and it takes a while for the giddy feeling in his stomach to climb up to his face to build a smile. "You wicked witch!"

Merrill looks back to him and when she sees him smile, she grins. "It was wicked, wasn't it?"

"Isabela would be proud."

Merrill beams at him. "Oh, you think so?"

"Definitely." Carver takes her by the arms and pulls her down on him. "I'm glad you did that."

"Yes?"

"Yes." Carver traces her ear like she did with his and revels in her sigh as she closes her eyes and shudders. He kisses along her neck as he keeps playing with the tip of her ear. 

"Carver," she whispers. Her hips press against him, her whole body moves over him as if she's dancing with him.

Carver buries his face in her neck and breathes in her scent. "If you don't want this, if this is too fast," he mumbles into her ear, "you have to tell me now because, Maker have mercy, I'm losing my mind here."

Merrill slides off his body and removes her soft pants. "Why would I not want this?" She lies back on the side and slides her hand down his body. "I've wanted this for a long time."

Heat rises up in Carver and he hesitates only a moment. He shrugs out of his breeches, frantically kicking them off his feet and Merrill laughs out at his eagerness. As soon as he is naked, she crawls over him and sits up, her soft, warm core pressing against his erection.

"Merrill, you... you..." Words fail him and her smile guides him as his body takes over, searching for her, pulling her closer until he is sheathed inside of her heat. They move together like one being, the sound of their moans filling their bubble of intimacy as the storm howls outside. Merrill joyful cries are lost in the noise just as Carver's groans. The storm falls away from his mind as Merrill clings to him, moves with him, cries out with him as they tumble into their shared bliss.

When at last his senses widen enough again to take in the outside world, the storm has stopped. The room outside of the barrier is in shambles, the floor and every surface covered with dust and sand. Merrill nuzzles his neck and Carver closes his eyes against the chaos outside, releshing Merrill's embrace a little longer. 

"Do you still like me?" Merrill asks, her voice muffled.

"Maker's breath, yes, of course!" He pushes against her shoulders to lift her up and look in her eyes. "Whatever made you think I would not? I'm... I'm.. I've been running after you like a lost dog for years." He sits up and takes her head in his hand. "I really like you, so much. Why would I not?"

There is no smile on Merrill's face and her fearless gaze holds his whole heart still. "I'm a mage, you're a templar. We can't be with each other."

Carver's heart stops. "Do you not want to? Be with me?"

"Can I want that?" Merrill asks with a shrug. "I'm alone and there's still so much I don't understand about this city and this life here among you shems. I like you, I've always liked you and you were always nice to me but then you became a templar and now I should be afraid of you but I'm not."

"You don't ever have to be afraid of me, I'll never hurt you," Carver hurries to say. "I'll protect you!"

Merrill strokes over his ear, down to his cheek. "But I'm endangering _you._

That had not occurred to Carver at all. "Oh." He stares at her, her gentle smile, her green eyes deep enough to get lost in them and his heart swells three sizes. "I'm not giving you up. If you want me to, I'll be at your side, no matter what."

A blush spreads on Merrill's cheek. "Of course I want you to but we'll have to be careful and I'm so bad at keeping secrets."

"We can tell our friends," Carver says. "My sister probably knows everything already anyway. And the rest — sod them, none of their business."

Merrill laughs, her smile like a ray of sunshine warming Carver up. She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him. 

Carver pulls her closer and kisses along her jaw. "No matter what happens, I'll protect you."

Merrill leans back and smiles at him. "No, vhenan. I'll protect _you._


End file.
